Devil's Game (9 page)

Thackeray turned to Rafferty and smiled.

‘You never give up,’ he said.

‘Why would I?’ Rafferty said, his brogue more pronounced. ‘The good Lord never gives up.’

Thackeray hardly remembered the drive home when he finally parked outside the flat he shared with Laura Ackroyd in a converted Victorian house. He sat for a moment clutching the steering wheel after he had switched the engine off as if it were some sort of lifebelt which could save him from drowning. He was aware that the lights were on in the flat and that Laura must be there, no doubt cooking a meal which would somehow bridge the gap between his ingrained country taste for simple food, which he had never cast off, and her more adventurous preferences. They were, he thought, an ill-matched couple and he doubted that they could remain a couple much longer.

He opened the front door and took off his coat before going to find Laura, as he expected in the kitchen, and felt cheered by the simple domesticity of the scene. He kissed the back of her neck, where her unruly copper hair escaped from a casual ponytail, and felt the stirrings of desire. He sensed her respond to his exploratory roaming hands, but she pulled away and turned to him, wooden spoon in hand, her eyes troubled.

‘Not now,’ she said, giving him a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘This will spoil. And I need to talk to you.’ She had been steeling herself for hours and was not to be put off now.

‘What is it?’ he asked, sniffing suspiciously at the garlicky aroma and peering at the conglomeration of vegetables she had been stirring in a large pan.

‘Ratatouille,’ she said. ‘Mixed veg, Mediterranean style, to go with the lamb cutlets. Compromise?’

‘Huh,’ he said, turning away with a smile. ‘More foreign muck.’ He poured a vodka and tonic for her and a tonic for himself, and went into the living room to watch the television news, but he switched the set off when she came in to join him.

‘So, why so serious?’ he asked as she sat down beside him, dodging his outstretched arm. She took a deep breath before she spoke.

‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she said, seeking some reassurance in his eyes but finding only sudden anxiety. ‘There’s no easy way to say it,’ she said, her voice jerky and slightly harsh. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Michael, and I hope you can be happy about it. I didn’t do it deliberately, in fact I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m pregnant.’

Thackeray shot to his feet as if he had been physically struck, and went to the window where the curtains were not yet drawn. He stood for a long time staring out into the gathering darkness where a solitary blackbird was singing its heart out in one of the still-dormant trees. He felt physically frozen and began to shiver uncontrollably, the almost constant pain in his back, where he had been shot over a year ago, beginning to stab. He was aware of Laura coming to stand close to him, but he pulled away from her and went to brace himself with his back to the door, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and outrage.

‘How?’ he asked. ‘How could you let that happen?’

‘I don’t know, honestly I don’t. I must have missed a pill. I just don’t know.’

Thackeray shook his head and closed his eyes briefly, and Laura watched him with tears filling her eyes.

‘Just tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking. If you
can’t handle it…’ She paused, for a long moment, obviously hoping he would speak, and when he didn’t she shrugged and continued faintly. ‘Well,
if
you can’t handle it, I’ll have to decide what to do.’

Thackeray turned away without a word and went out of the room. Laura heard the outside door slam and, within seconds, Thackeray’s car start up in the street outside and drive away. She sat for a long time by the fireplace, gazing into space as the light faded, until a smell of burning brought her back to the world and she rushed into the kitchen to switch off the gas under the ruined meal. She cursed under her breath as she scraped the pans into the rubbish bin. Then she picked up her own coat and bag and left the flat.

Vicky Mendelson opened the door to Laura at the first ring on the bell, her face full of concern, and ushered her into the sitting room.

‘I’ve just chased the boys to bed,’ she said. ‘And David’s out, so it’s just us. Do you want a drink?’

Laura shook her head.

‘If I start drinking, I might not stop,’ she said.

‘Oh hell. So tell me what happened,’ Vicky demanded, so Laura did.

‘I think it’s all over,’ she said finally. ‘He won’t forgive me if I have the baby, and he certainly won’t forgive me if I don’t. It’s a lose-lose situation.’

‘The man’s impossible,’ Vicky said angrily. ‘I’m surprised you’ve stuck with him so long.’

‘When he nearly died last year, when he got shot, I realised I couldn’t live without him,’ Laura said. ‘So what can I do now? It’s my fault. I was careless, stupid even. When I found out, I thought I could persuade him to go along with it. But
he wouldn’t even talk to me. Not a word…’ Laura wiped the tears from her eyes angrily. ‘This baby needs a father. I’m not sure I can bring it up on my own.’

‘I’m sure you can,’ Vicky said. ‘Lots of mothers do. But I think you’re writing Michael off too quickly. It must have been a shock to him. Give him time, and he’ll come round. Didn’t he say that he thought he could cope once?’

‘Once,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘But he soon seemed to lose heart, thought better of it, whatever.’

‘Oh Laura, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

‘He went off without a word. I’m so afraid he’ll do something desperate. He’s been so down lately, mainly because of the shooting last year, but I’m sure it’s partly to do with the fact that he knows I want a child.’

‘Not suicidal, surely?’ Vicky said, unable to hide her horror.

‘There are lots of ways to commit suicide,’ Laura said. ‘Michael once tried very hard with bottles of booze. I know that.’

‘You’ve no idea where he’s gone?’

‘He’s still got his own flat on Manchester Road. He’s always refused to sell it. He uses that as a bolt-hole sometimes.’

‘Do you want to go round there? Should we both go? David will be home soon, so I could leave the children with him.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Laura said wearily. ‘He’d hate you getting involved.’

‘Of course,’ Vicky agreed. ‘It’s just that I feel I want to do something. He makes me so furious. This should be the start of the happiest time of your life – his too, for God’s sake – and look at the mess you’re both in. I feel guilty for ever having introduced you to each other.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Laura said with a faint smile, taking Vicky’s hand and squeezing it. ‘It’s not your fault. And as you say, lots of people bring children up on their own. If that’s what I have to do, then that’s what I’ll have to do. We have had some good times together, you know, in spite of everything. And this is Michael’s baby, mine and Michael’s, so perhaps he’ll decide that he can be a father again, somehow, when it arrives, if not before.’ She did not sound as if she was convincing herself and Vicky gave her a long hug.

‘Let’s hope so,’ she said. ‘So sod him, and start looking forward, why don’t you? Your life is about to change big time. You have absolutely no idea what you’re letting yourself in for.’

Michael Thackeray sat for a long time in his car watching the crowds of young people swirl around the town centre in cheerful groups, dodging in and out of pubs and clubs. It was still early and they had not yet reached the pitch where fights would break out and a handful of staggering girls would be sick in the gutter or fall down shrieking with laughter, half in and half out of their skimpy clothes and apparently never feeling the cold. What was wrong with him, he wondered, that he had never ever enjoyed life in that uninhibited way, never, even as a student in Oxford, with an apparently brilliant future in front of him, felt really carefree? There had always been this weight on his shoulders that he had once tried to lift with the help of the sort of temporary cheerfulness and eventual oblivion alcohol brought, but that had become a demon which destroyed his family and almost destroyed him as his brilliant future receded.

Tempting as some of the pubs he had just driven past had
seemed, holding out their comforting embrace of bright lights and cheerful clatter, and promising forgetfulness, he had resisted them without even slowing the car. More than anything, the thought of the new life he had created, even unknowingly, stayed like a single bright star at the centre of his mind, guiding him away from the worst of his temptations. But that did not ease the mental turmoil that had overwhelmed him as soon as Laura had broken the news that she was pregnant. He had not trusted himself to speak, fearing either an outpouring of anger for which she would never forgive him, or a scream of pain which she would never understand. Her words had ricochetted round his mind and he had been unable to do anything but turn and run.

He sighed and pulled away from the kerb and headed up the hill out of town towards his own flat. He needed to be alone, he thought, and he feared that in the end he might always need to be alone.

It was surprising, DCI Michael Thackeray thought, through the fog of a sleepless night, that the foxes had gained access to this unholy parcel, but they had scraped through a light covering of dark peaty soil and chewed through the plastic wrapping and exposed a naked foot, which they had gnawed to the bone, leaving the unlucky early morning jogger no doubt as to what was inside when he stumbled over it on his regular run. He was sitting now, half in and half out of a police car, still visibly shaken even though it had taken more than half an hour for the forces of law and order to reach him after he had phoned in on his mobile to report his discovery, and another quarter for the forensic teams to arrive and begin photographing the scene, before erecting a white plastic tent over the body and its immediate surroundings. The cars and vans were awkwardly parked now on boggy ground from which it might be difficult to extricate them when their jobs were done.

They were eight miles or so beyond the edge of Bradfield and more than a thousand feet higher, on a windswept plateau
of wiry moorland grass dotted with boggy patches where browning sedge struggled for survival and the occasional stand of spiny gorse leant away from the prevailing westerlies. Whoever had left this parcel here in a shallow grave had been unlucky to have anyone stumble over it so soon that, as far as he could judge, decomposition had not yet seriously set in. Up here, on the high tops, it could have been several weeks or even months before anyone else had stumbled across it, Thackeray thought.

‘Take a statement from our lad over there, Kevin, will you?’ he said. ‘Then he can get off home. He looks half frozen already.’

‘Right, guv,’ Mower said, hoping that even though he had been roused too soon from the companionable warmth of a shared bed, he did not look half as shattered as his boss appeared to be. Thackeray’s haggard look and the dark circles under his eyes suggested to the sergeant a night without any sleep at all.

‘Here’s Amos,’ Mower said as he turned away and noticed a car pull up cautiously at the edge of the road on the moor top. The pathologist, Amos Atherton, was clearly not willing to risk his Beamer in the mud, and he began a slow trudge along the rough track which took off at right angles from a quiet back route to Lancashire. It was an isolated spot, especially at this time of the year, when the local sheep had been taken to lower ground for lambing, leaving the area to only the hardiest birds and wild animals.

Amos Atherton, breathing heavily, eventually reached Thackeray and slapped him on the back, at his most jovial in spite of the bitter wind whipping over the moors from a sky of scudding grey clouds and spattering rain.

‘What’s this? A late Christmas present?’ he asked.

Thackeray did not respond and Atherton looked at him sharply, before turning to the task in hand inside the flapping tent.

‘Have you got photographs?’ he asked, eyeing the
half-buried
plastic. ‘Can I open it up?’

‘Go ahead,’ Thackeray said. The layers of what looked like black dustbin liners from which the foot protruded at an awkward angle were secured with bands of brown duct tape, almost like a mummy, and when Atherton gently slit the parcel from the exposed foot to what appeared to be the top of the head, it fell away to each side like a pod.

‘Christ,’ Atherton said, with unaccustomed profanity as the cold light revealed what appeared at first glance to be little more than the contents of a butcher’s slab. Thackeray’s face turned to stone and one of the younger officers close behind him turned away, pale and retching.

‘Human remains, no doubt,’ Atherton said quietly. ‘Fairly recent, too.’

‘Male or female?’ Thackeray asked. The body was naked but had been so savagely mutilated that its gender was not immediately apparent.

‘Female, at a guess, but as you can see the sexual characteristics have been pretty much obliterated.’ He sighed heavily and lifted a stray piece of black plastic from what was left of the head, where little of the face was distinguishable.’

‘And why the hell would he cut all her hair off?’ he asked, peering closely at the tufted remains clinging to a torn and bloodied scalp. ‘What the hell is that all about?’

‘Cause of death?’ Thackeray asked, but Atherton just shrugged.

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘We’d better get her down to the mortuary, as soon as I’ve finished this examination and your SOCOs are through. You’ve got a serious problem here, Michael. Whoever did this has gone totally berserk, and I wouldn’t bet a brass farthing on him not doing it again.’

Superintendent Jack Longley gazed at his DCI gloomily, and not merely because of the gruesome post-mortem details Thackeray had just relayed to him. Michael Thackeray, he thought, looked seriously ill but he knew from long experience that the younger man would confide nothing and admit nothing about his private life, or even his health, if it did not suit him to do so. Longley had gone out on a limb when he had insisted on Thackeray’s suitability for the job in Bradfield, given the ample evidence of a chequered previous career, and he still felt, in spite of some near catastrophes, that his confidence had been well placed. Which did not stop him frequently wishing that Thackeray would sort out his relationship with Laura Ackroyd instead of apparently lurching from one emotional crisis to another.

He had thought, after Thackeray had been shot in the back, that his career might be over, had gone so far as to suggest that he retire early. But the DCI had insisted on coming back to work after what most of his colleagues thought was far too short a convalescence, and had so far seemed to function much as normal even if, to judge by appearances, that was far from what he was feeling. More than one colleague had reported noticing the painkillers on his desk, that he appeared to be taking as routine, and Longley had more than once wondered if he should not order him to take more sick leave.

This morning Thackeray looked like death and Longley
was sure that it was not simply because of the discovery of the bloodied, burnt, mutilated and so far unidentified body on Staveley Moor that had now been picked over and dissected on Amos Atherton’s slab and consigned to a numbered drawer in the mortuary refrigerator.

‘No chance of an ID then?’ Longley asked.

‘No chance of facial recognition,’ Thackeray said. ‘Certainly no distinguishing features. No jewellery. We’ll have to go for DNA. But given what was left of her red hair, I’d put money on it being Karen Bastable. It has to be, hasn’t it?’

Thackeray’s mind zeroed back to the slab where Atherton had shown him what was left of the woman – at least, he said, he could be sure of that much – who had been found on the moors. But the examination of the body had been even more appalling than usual and Atherton’s conclusions so unbelievable that Thackeray felt that he himself had been torn apart by wolves in much the way that the woman’s body had been ravaged.

‘Most of the injuries seem to have been inflicted before she died,’ Atherton had said, his expression unreadable, after detailing the external and internal state of the body for his report. ‘Slashing rather than stabbing wounds to most parts of the face and body, burns…if the object was to inflict the maximum pain then this would have done it.’

‘He tortured her to death?’ Thackeray had asked, almost unable to grasp the enormity of it.

‘Not quite,’ Atherton said. ‘The
coup de grace
is a single deep stab wound to the heart. A large, sharp instrument, quite possibly the same one that inflicted many of the other slashing injuries. But she must have been half dead from loss of blood and shock by the time the final blow was struck. I
reckon he was just making sure at that stage.’

‘Dear God,’ Thackeray said, stepping away from the table and untying his gown, reluctant to let Atherton see how deeply he was shaken.

‘Was she raped?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

‘Almost certainly. I’ve taken samples as far as I can, but as you can see, that area is in a mess. I’ll let you know about the possibilities for DNA analysis. Apart from her own, of course.’

Thackeray swallowed hard and shook himself back to the present and found Longley watching him closely.

‘It’s one thing to go out for a night of illicit sex, quite another to fall into the hands of a psychopath,’ he said.

‘Are you sure you can handle this, Michael?’ Longley asked.

‘Of course I can,’ the DCI replied sharply. ‘I need to get this bastard for my own satisfaction. And quickly, before he strikes again.’

‘You don’t reckon it’s the husband then?’

‘I did have him down as prime suspect,’ Thackeray admitted. ‘And I’m certainly not ruling him out. We’ll question him again as soon as we get a positive ID. And we’re still waiting for the forensics from the car he borrowed to follow Karen up to the forest. But this seems too extreme for a domestic, to be honest, too calculated. She’d been tied up with duct tape before the final attack. There were traces left on the arms, legs and round the mouth. That takes considerable premeditation. Bastable is a bit of a thug but I don’t think he’s a psycho. And I don’t really think he’s bright enough to have planned this. Or mad enough to have carried it out.’

‘Have you checked out with Holmes for any similar cases?
If this is as extreme as you say, it might not be the first time and there’ll be a record on the computer.’

‘That’s in hand,’ Thackeray said. ‘And we’re going ahead with the ad in the
Gazette
, to see if we can flush out any more of Karen’s playmates from the forest. Although if one of them was responsible for this, he’s not likely to show his face again. But basically this is dependent on forensics at the moment. The SOCOs say that they’ve lifted some partial fingerprints from the black plastic she was wrapped in, which is a bit of a miracle given that she’s been buried for at least a couple of days, Amos says, and it had been raining heavily. And Amos is looking for DNA, of course – the victim’s and the killer’s. He’s also found some fibres in her mouth which look interesting. But all this will take time, of course.’

‘There’s absolutely no way we can physically identify the body?’

‘No clothes, no jewellery, not even a wedding ring,’ Thackeray said. ‘She had red hair, which the killer has hacked off, but that’s about all I could offer Bastable for ID purposes. Karen had red hair. But you’ve got to assume that, if he did it, he won’t want the body identified anyway. He could deny it’s her simply to give himself more time. We’ll have to wait for the DNA before we can possibly consider a charge. We’ve already taken samples from the house, of course, to check out this car Bastable borrowed. I’ll see if I can put pressure on the lab to get a quick result, but you know what they’re like. They’re rushed off their feet these days.’

‘What are you going to tell the press?’

Thackeray shrugged wearily.

‘Whatever we tell them – and we’ve little enough to give them – Bob Baker at the
Gazette
will add two and two and
make five. There’s bound to be speculation. What I’m planning is to get Bastable in here again this morning to give him another going over, and then put a statement out about the discovery of a body after that.’

‘Leave a press conference until after we’ve got an ID, you mean?’

‘I think so, don’t you?’

‘Keep the press office at county informed,’ Longley said. ‘I’ll handle a press conference when you’re ready.’

‘Fine,’ Thackeray said.

Laura Ackroyd sat at her computer that morning feeling stunned, mouth dry, eyes gritty and brain feeling too numb to respond to anything less than an earthquake. She had stayed late with Vicky Mendelson, guessing that she would not sleep if she went back to the empty flat. She had no hope that Michael Thackeray might have returned. In fact, she had very little hope that he would ever return, though the thought of bringing up a child alone was one which she still shied away from, barely able to contemplate the enormity of it, in spite of Vicky’s optimism. But eventually, realising that Vicky and David were becoming increasingly anxious to go to bed, she had torn herself away from her friends’ house and driven home, knocked back a couple of V and Ts and fallen into a doze on the sofa, before finally crawling into bed at three in the morning. But she had hardly slept, wakened at seven by the alarm from a fitful sleep from which even a deliberately chilly shower did not entirely rouse her. She got to work late, earning a filthy glance from Ted Grant, who missed very little that happened in his newsroom, and had since then alternated between gazing dead-eyed at her screen and making a few
telephone calls to try to track down David Murgatroyd, without success. The man was elusive, she thought, and deliberately so. But the more elusive he proved to be, the more determined she became to find him and get the interview she wanted and which had been half promised.

But before she could call Winston Sanderson again on his London number to press her case, her phone rang with an incoming call. At the other end her grandmother sounded both angry and unusually hesitant.

‘What is it, Nan?’ Laura said, surprised but barely able to keep the impatience out of her voice. ‘Are you in Portugal? Was the journey OK?’ Joyce Ackroyd hesitated for a moment and then began to speak very quickly.

‘I’m sorry to bother you at work, pet, but it’s Debbie Stapleton,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a call from Steve O’Mara, the parent governor, you know? He got me all the way out here on my mobile. It’s amazing, isn’t it? He says she’s been told to stop opposing the academy plan if she wants to be considered for the headship. And it’s a really nasty threat. You probably didn’t know. Not many people do.’

‘Know what, Nan?’ Laura broke in, not especially surprised at Joyce’s news. She already had the impression, after Ted Grant’s comments about pressure from the local council, that the supporters of the school plan would use any means open to them to push their proposal through.

‘She’s wide open to this sort of blackmail,’ Joyce said, her voice sinking to an embarrassed mumble.

‘Why?’ Laura asked, intrigued now, wondering what dark secret the apparently dedicated and squeaky-clean Debbie Stapleton might be concealing.